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PostPosted: May 10th, 2012, 10:03 am 
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http://protoncharging.com/2012/05/10/ma ... s-in-2013/

castewar wrote:
It was pretty much a given, once Mattel announced that they were canceling Club Ecto, the subscription based service that provided fans with first crack at unique figures, but Scott “ToyGuru” Neitlich, Mattel’s brand manager in charge of the license, confirmed a lot more details today, outlining exactly why the line was shut down. You ready…?

There aren’t enough of us.

Toyguru wrote:
After we did not receive enough sub holders in 2012, we could not get additional development resources for more figures so we move the most fan demanded figure that was already in development to the SDCC slot. Fans really do vote with their purchase and the sub not selling was a big red flag that we don’t have enough customers for the 6″ GB line right now.


Mattel was already worried about the line when sales of the figures showed that the main interest was in the original four busters, and of those, Peter was the most popular. None of them – the later figures (which would be of more interest to more serious fans) were worse – sold anywhere near the numbers of Mattel’s best two licenses, Masters of the Universe and DC Universe.


Not all bad news, though:

castewar wrote:
Mattel still holds the license and is still looking at their best prospects with it – presumably the props – and has confirmed they are still looking at new products for 2013. As well they, like a lot of license holders one imagines, have high hopes for the announcement of a third movie, in which case Mattel would have lot’s more development resources available. Stay tuned.


I thought for a long time the timing of Mattel's original announcement that they had the license, coming as it did just about the time the Video Game hype was up and there was a really big push for GB3, meant that part of their whole strategy was to have their foot in the door for the lucrative GB3 licensing deals. Kind of "We'll work the bugs out selling this stuff to the niche market, then once GB3 gets into the theatres we'll rake in the bucks". But of course GB3 never makes it out of "They'll maybe start filming sometime next year" for the last four years, and the line remains a niche seller.

I dunno...I admit that I didn't buy too many because the cartoon is really my first love in the GB franchise, and there wasn't a lot aimed at that market. Yeah, there probably isn't one, which is sad considering the show was one of the biggest hits in the 80's. I bought up all the Retro Action stuff, and no doubt would have been there with everyone else braving the White Screen of Death on Mattel's server for RGB figures of the quality of the 6 inch line. I did get the GB2 set, and it was damn awesome--I can't understand why anyone who prefers the movie versions of the characters didn't snap that stuff up.

I don't know. I think back to the 80's and Kenner pretty much had a similar problem: you had people complaining about all the weird variants of the four to six (depending on the set) main characters but those being the stuff that sold the best. They at least had a top-rated cartoon to drive sales, though.

I'm sad to see it come to this, but I'm really not surprised.
:|

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